Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Under strong morning sun and
relieved by a cool breeze, many thousands attended today’s mass in Havana’s Plaza
de la Revolucion.

Pope Benedict XVI presided in
Spanish, spoken clearly and in a strong voice, from a specially built shaded
platform in front of the monument to Jose Marti. To his right was an orchestra and very large
chorus that provided music unlike what he hears in Rome, and more beautiful.

Directly ahead of the pope were
the plaza’s iconic images of Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos; if he turned to
his right he saw a massive image of the Virgin of Charity hung on the façade of
the national library, and to his left the national theater bore a banner
reading “Charity Unites Us.”

The crowd at mass was large but
not overwhelming, the size impossible to tell from my ant’s-eye view. It appeared to be a mix of the faithful, the curious,
and some who attended briefly then departed.
Some were from abroad. Crowds were calm, access
was easy despite some closed streets, and traffic restrictions dissolved soon after the
pontiff’s departure.

The religious message in the
scripture readings and the homily had to do with truth, revealed by faith and
reason, as the only true foundation of liberty.

Benedict turned to church-state
relations in his homily. He expressed
happiness at advances made in recent years, including in the church’s public
expressions of religious faith, and he called for the church and authorities to
continue on this path and to build on what has been achieved, “for the good of
all.” The church is “seeking no
privilege” in its effort to gain greater space, he said, and seeks only “to
serve its founder.”

Cuban television reported that a
brief visit took place between the pope and Fidel Castro today.

Thursday, March 22, 2012

It says something about Cuba that Pope Benedict XVI, at age 84 and
traveling with difficulty, will spend three days on the island after visiting
Mexico to greet the local faithful and meet bishops from around Latin America.

Benedict’s pastoral visit will cap Cubans’ celebration of the 400th
anniversary of their patron saint, the Virgin of Charity.Thousands greeted the statue of the virgin in
its just-completed pilgrimage through every Cuban province, taking two months
to make its way through the Havana archdiocese alone.Cardinal Jaime Ortega called the celebration
a “springtime of faith” that drew out a hidden but latent religiosity in a
people whose government once stigmatized all faiths except that of the
communist party.

When Pope John Paul II visited in 1998, Fidel Castro was in charge and
many expected the presence of a charismatic pope to spark big changes.

Today, Cuba is changing on its
own.President Raul Castro is leading a
deliberate but significant economic reform that promises to move more than one
million Cubans from public to private payrolls and has already expanded the
ranks of small entrepreneurs by 200,000.Government enterprises are to turn a profit or be dissolved.“We have to erase forever the notion that
Cuba is the only country in the world where one can live without working,” he
says.

Cardinal Ortega puts it a little
differently.The economic system is “bureaucratic and Stalinist,” he said in a 2010
interview, and “creates apathetic workers with low productivity.”With a “national consensus” solidly backing
reform, delays only lead to “impatience and dissatisfaction among the people.”

Castro and Ortega make an odd pair – a communist who served four
decades as defense minister, and a pastor whom the communists tried to
re-educate in a work camp in the 1960’s.

Yet their relationship is respectful.Raul Castro attended a beatification ceremony in eastern Cuba and the
opening of a seminary outside Havana.They have a regular dialogue that marks the church’s acceptance by the
government as an interlocutor about Cuban domestic policies.In his day, Fidel Castro always preferred to
speak to the Vatican over the heads of the Cuban bishops.

Cuba’s Catholic magazines are pushing the boundaries of the reform
debate with articles – written by clergy, Catholic laity, Cuban academics, and
Cuban Americans – making the case for a greater economic opening and freedom to
travel abroad, and for the communist party to embark on political reform.

In a sense, the church is serving one function of a political
opposition by pressing the government to form policies that serve the public
good, and to keep its promises.But the
church is anything but a political organization, and its public policy voice
derives from what it conceives as its mission to look out not only for Cubans’
spiritual needs, but for their general welfare.As an editorial in a church publication put it, ideologies “should be at
the service of the Cuban people, not the other way around.”

This role comes with its share of controversy.The church’s good offices were essential to
the release of 130 political prisoners serving long sentences – reducing the
number of prisoners of conscience recognized by Amnesty International to zero –
but when all but twelve accepted an offer to leave for Spain with their
families, the church was accused of weakening the political opposition and
accommodating a form of government antithetical to Christianity.

This argument will not be resolved.The Cuban Catholic church has reached a prudential judgment that as a
religious institution and Cuba’s largest civil society institution, it does
best to use dialogue and debate to push for change from within, even if that
change is incremental.

That’s an unpopular posture among those who want all Cubans on the
island to take on greater militancy.But
my guess is that Cubans on the island want changes that improve their daily
lives and support the church or anyone else who promotes them.Which is not to say that Cubans don’t cover
the complete spectrum of opinions about the kind of government they would like
to have and the kind of policies they would like it to adopt.But they don’t make the perfect the enemy of
the good.And militancy is easy from
Miami.

Where does this leave Benedict, the “intellectual” pope described by
Cardinal Ortega in remarks on Cuban state television?

His visit will surely be more than pastoral.One can imagine that he will seek greater
space for Catholic religious or charitable activity, and make some requests of
a humanitarian nature.

But Benedict is not likely to “open a new chapter in the history of
Cuba,” as Lech Walesa predicted dramatically last week.His embrace will be a vote of confidence in Cardinal
Ortega and the Cuban church, and as the Vatican’s head of state he will applaud
improved church-state relations in Havana.But he will leave it to the Cubans to make their own history.

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Both Alan Gross, the USAID contractor serving a Cuban jail sentence,
and Rene Gonzalez, the convicted Cuban agent who completed his jail term and is
now on probation, have relatives who are dying of cancer and each has requested
a chance to return home for a visit.

Cuban authorities have not commented on Gross’ request.

The Justice Department opposed
Gonzalez’ request on national security grounds, but a federal judge
has now granted it – a two-week visit with a requirement that he check in
from Cuba and return to finish serving his probation.

This might seem to set the stage for a reciprocal action on Cuba’s
part.But since the Obama Administration
argued against the Gonzalez visit in court, it would be tricky for U.S. diplomats
to take credit for the judge’s order and present it as a positive gesture.

But try they might.When Cuban
officials are asked to commute Alan Gross’ sentence and let him come home for
good, they respond that they are willing to talk about humanitarian gestures on
a reciprocal basis.

One thing that stands out is that the United States trusts Gonzalez
when he says he will come back after his visit.

Monday, March 19, 2012

The Herald’s Glenn
Garvin reviews Brian Latell’s new book on the Cuban intelligence
service.He zeroes in on a defector’s
report that, owing to statements Lee Harvey Oswald made at the Cuban embassy in
Mexico City, Fidel Castro may have known in advance that Oswald was going to
assassinate President Kennedy.And
thanks to a double agent, Fidel knew that JFK was after him.Latell: “I don’t say Fidel Castro ordered the
assassination, I don’t say Oswald was under his control. He might have been, but I don’t argue that,
because I was unable to find any evidence for that. But did Fidel want Kennedy dead? Yes. He
feared Kennedy. And he knew Kennedy was
gunning for him. In Fidel’s mind, he was
probably acting in self-defense.”

AP:
Dozens of dissidents were detained Sunday as they gathered for a march,
and “by Sunday evening, many had been released and some driven back to
their homes.”Elizardo Sanchez’
group counted
604 such detentions in February.

The Herald reports
on an effort to allow jailed USAID contractor Alan Gross to depart
Cuba for two weeks to see his cancer-stricken mother.His lawyer says he has a Treasury
Department license that would allow him to return to Cuba after such a visit.There is a parallel effort to gain
permission for one of the Cuban Five, Rene Gonzales who is out of jail and
on parole, to go to Cuba to visit his dying brother.(The Justice Department is
opposed.)Alan Gross’ wife Judy sympathized
with the Cuban’s request: “I fully appreciate Rene Gonzalez’ need to visit
a dying family member. We need to remember that these are real people and
real lives that are profoundly affected by these decisions.”

This podcast
features a discussion of the Alan Gross case by editors and reporters of
the Jewish Daily Forward, shortly after the February Associated
Press story appeared.

Emilio Aranguren, bishop
of Holguin, issues a statement
(pdf) on the protest in the Holguin cathedral last week.

The Oakland A’s Yoenis
Cespedes in the Sacramento
Bee: “What they earn, they don’t receive. That’s what motivates Cuban
players to leave.”

A number of
Spanish-language blogs are linking to the 1937 papal encyclical (Spanish,
English)
on the “false messianic idea” of “atheistic communism,” mentioned here
when Cardinal Bertone visited Cuba in 2008.